


Forgive Me, They Were Delicious

by Blacksquirrel



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-30
Updated: 2007-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/pseuds/Blacksquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unlikely relationship blooms</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive Me, They Were Delicious

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Teyla, Novak, Atlantis, or the Daedalus, nor do I own the poem, or fruit stasis technology. I do claim some credit for combining these things.
> 
> In response to a prompt by viciouswishes for the sg_femslash minificathon. Prompt will follow the story.
> 
> Minor season 2 spoilers, post The Siege

Although Lindsay Novak dearly loved hyperdrives and Asgard transport beams, she had to admit that weapons and spaceships came in only a close second and third to the modified stasis chamber which kept the Daedalus stocked with perfectly fresh fruit. Well, more to the point, it kept her supplied with fresh fruit (and at the top of the barter economy), along with Hermiod and a select few others who had either helped with the design or helped procure parts.

Yet on this crossing Lindsay hadn't hoarded her share of the loot for trade in Atlantis, or on the long passage back to Earth. Instead she clutched a brown paper bag as she navigated Atlantis's long maze of corridors, ducking between doorways and potted plants, behind pillars, and at one point into a storage closet, to avoid the detection of her precious cargo.

Finally she knocked at a door in a residential wing. "It's me," she called, and as the door swished open in response, in her excitement at the familiarity that greeting implied, she nearly began to hiccup. Then her breath caught entirely at the soft smile that greeted her. Immediately the cracked couplings, sensor interference, and staff tantrums of the past weeks melted away. Lindsay loved space and circuits and orders and ancient crystals, but what she felt with Teyla touched her somewhere that had lain dormant for all the long years she had spent trying to be the kind of person that the Air Force would trust with space and circuits and orders and ancient crystals.

She leaned into Teyla's warmth and their foreheads met in a brief caress, then Teyla pulled her inside, letting the door slide closed behind them. Finally remembering to breathe again, all the air rushed from Lindsay's chest in one long string of words as she raised the bag. "I brought something for you. Well, us. Or just you, if you want to eat them later. I think you'll like them. Or you might not like them. But they'll be new, and that's the thing-" seeing Teyla's encouraging look, she slowed, "-right?"

Teyla peered into the bag and Lindsay's heart leapt in the moment when Teyla's eyes lit up at the contents, then closed as she inhaled deeply to savor the aroma. "That is very sweet of you, Lindsay. We will enjoy them together. But first, have you been practicing? Let's sit together."

That's how it had begun between them. Although paradoxically the onset of nearly constant, life-threatening danger had almost cured Lindsay's chronic hiccups, they inevitably cropped up again at irregular intervals. When Colonel Caldwell's reprimand over the public PA system sent her to her bunk shaking with mortification after she couldn't manage to coherently inform the crew of a routine systems check, she decided to acquiesce to Teyla's offer. The embarrassment of taking up so much of a near stranger's time was nothing compared to losing face in front of all her co-workers.

But what had begun as merely a teaching relationship had slowly become much more important. Little by little Teyla's meditation lessons gave Lindsay more control over her body, but also forced her to become more conscious of her body and its demands and pleasures. The replies that she conjured in response to Teyla's question at the end of each session were true enough, but merely part of the truth. "How do you feel?" Teyla asked, and at first Lindsay said "fine," or "good," as she had a million times before to a million superficial acquaintances. But the longer she spent in Teyla's presence the more she began to feel something deeper passing between them, and so began to answer, "centered," "grounded," and "warm," and truly, being with Teyla did feel that way. But as time passed she was tempted to say "I feel yearning," "I feel sweet aching," "I feel myself drawn to you."

And sometimes, when she felt very hopeful, and very good about herself, she thought she saw some glint in Teyla's eye, heard some tenderness in her voice, felt some purposefulness in her occasional touch, and thought she recognized a shared hunger in Teyla that she had only begun to discover in herself.

Lindsay took Teyla's hand and followed her to the ring of pillows and candles where they practiced. Placing the bag in front of her, Lindsay knelt, then mirrored Teyla as they worked through a familiar series of exercises, eyes locked. In one nostril, then out the other. Shallow pants, and deep bellyfuls of air. Bent to restrict one lung, then the other. Lindsay imagined, as she fell deeper and deeper into Teyla's gaze, that she could taste Teyla's breath every time she pulled in air.

When they had finished, Teyla reached out and held Lindsay's hands. "I am very proud of you," she said, and reached one finger to delicately trace the line of Lindsay's nose. "You have made excellent progress." Then Teyla picked up the bag with a little smirk, "Now, let's see what you've brought us."

She withdrew a riotous bouquet of fruits: pears, berries, apricots, mangos, plums, figs, and bananas, each brilliantly colored and perfectly ripe. Lindsay had selected them herself, and carefully placed them in stasis at their peak. Teyla ooo-ed and aaaa-ed appreciatively, turning each over and over in her hands, raising them to her nose, then moving them to and fro, into different light. "I have seen many of these before in Colonel Sheppard's dream of your world, but did not get a chance to taste any of them. Yet-" She paused, perusing the bounty laid before her. Finally she selected an Italian plum, "-this I do not believe I have ever encountered before. Shall we start here?"

Lindsay nodded. She had loved the little purple plums ever since she was a girl, when she used to climb her grandmother's fence to steal pocketsfull of them from a neighboring field. She was never sure if her theft went unnoticed and unmourned, but her grandmother's neighbor rarely picked there until half the plums had already gone rotten. She figured that she had as much right to them as the birds and raccoons, and rather more right than someone who would ask the seasons to wait for his schedule to open. She ate them behind the shed and hid the leftovers behind the pickles and baking soda, at the very back of her grandmother's icebox.

Teyla pulled the plum in half, tearing it open at its base with her thumb nails, then she handed a piece to Lindsay as the juice ran down their wrists. An ambrosial sent enveloped them as they each bit into the fruit, and momentarily closed their eyes at the crisp tartness and round honeyed sweetness that burst across palates too long deprived by rations and MREs. Opening her eyes, Lindsay met Teyla's questing fingers with her own and they joined sticky palms again as the last juices lingered and Teyla's tongue slipped across her lips.

Then Teyla bent her head to trace the purple stains on Lindsay's thumb. Gasping, Lindsay felt heat bloom within her. "I thought you were with John," she said, the words spilling out before she could stop them.

Teyla released Lindsay's thumb, then straightened, and in the weight of her gaze Lindsay felt recognition she'd never known before. "Do you care for me Lindsay?" Teyla asked quietly, and Lindsay answered, the truest answer, the only answer, "I love you, Teyla."

Teyla brightened. Not a serene smile, or a public smile, but a true smile of hope and gratitude, brimming with satisfaction. "As I love you, Lindsay Novak. I want you to know that although John is special to me, he may never be ready to admit even to himself how much he cares about the people around him. Perhaps he imagines that I will wait for him, but I have already been consumed by a different hunger." Guiding her own sticky thumb to Lindsay's mouth, Teyla traced Lindsay's lips, and Lindsay's pulse raced in elation as she watched Teyla's eyes darken, remembering pleasures plucked and savored in secret.

When they kissed, with Lindsay's fingers teasing along lush, ripe hips, Teyla tasted far more precious and illicit than the plum.

**Author's Note:**

> viciouswishes' prompt, Teyla/Novak and:
> 
> This Is Just to Say  
> by William Carlos Williams
> 
> I have eaten  
> the plums  
> that were in  
> the icebox
> 
> and which  
> you were probably  
> saving  
> for breakfast
> 
> Forgive me  
> they were delicious  
> so sweet  
> and so cold


End file.
